Adamant
Pronunciation
Alternative forms
- adamaunt obsolete
Origin
From Latin adamantem (""), accusative singular form of adamÄs ("hard as steel"), from Ancient Greek ἀδάμας (adamas, "invincible"), from á¼€- (a-, "not") + δαμάζω (damazo, "I tame").
Full definition of adamant
Adjective
adamant
- Firm; unshakeable; unyielding; determined.
- 2002, Charles Moncrief, Wildcatters: The True Story of how Conspiracy, Greed and the IRS ..., Broiles and Kirkley were adamant about getting out of the lawsuit, but Mike and Dee were equally adamant about not wanting to sign a letter of apology
- 2006, Cara E. C. Vermaak, Confessions of the Dyslexic Virgin, Johan is determined to play the field and adamant about never committing.
- 2010, Deeanne Gist, Maid to Match, What good would such foolishness do a mountain man? But Pa had been adamant. Just as he'd been adamant about their reading, writing, numbers, geography, and languages. Just as he'd been adamant about using proper grammar
Synonyms
Noun
adamant
(plural adamants)- An imaginary rock or mineral of impenetrable hardness; a name given to the diamond and other substances of extreme hardness.
- 1582, w, The first booke of the Christian exercise, appertayning to resolution Chapter 8, This then is and alwayes hath ben the fashion of Worldlinges, & reprobate persons, to harden their hartes as an adamant stone, against anye thinge that shalbe tolde the for amendement of their lives, and for the savinge of their soules.
- An embodiment of impregnable hardness.
- 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, p 34Unprotected matter, however adamant, would have been ground to dust ages ago.
- A magnet; a lodestone.
- 1594–96, William Shakespeare, :You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant:But yet you draw not iron, for all my heartIs true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,And I shall have no power to follow you.
Derived terms
- adamance noun
- adamantane adj
- adamantean adj
- adamantine adj
- adamantly adverb